François Devienne

François Devienne was born in Joinville, France (about 200km south-east of Paris, half-way to the Swiss border) in January 1759. He was a renowned flautist and bassoonist before also becoming a composer and music teacher. Little appears known about his early life: apocryphal stories were told of him writing a mass at 10 which was performed by musicians of the Royal Cravate cavalry regiment, but these are almost certainly untrue. What is known is that he received his earliest music training from the organist Morizot in Joinville before continuing his education in Zweibrücken, in Germany. He joined the orchestra of the Paris Opéra in 1779 and there met the orchestra's principal flautist Félix Rault, with whom he went on to study. He then joined the musical establishment of Cardinal de Rohan and stayed in that post until 1785. His bassoon concerto premiered in Paris in 1780 and he first appeared as a flute soloist there in 1782 and as a bassoon soloist in 1784. He moved back to Paris in 1788 and became principal bassoonist of the orchestra of the Théâtre de Monsieur -a position he held until 1801. He married in about 1789 and went on to have five children. He died in a Parisian institution for the mentally ill, in May 1803.

Apart from much chamber and orchestral work, Devienne wrote about 12 operas, his most popular being Les visitandines. He also wrote some 25 string quartets. He is said to have done much to raise the musical level of works written for wind instruments in France in the late 18th century and is sometimes called 'The French Mozart', though that probably has more to do with the fact that he was a contemporary of Mozart's than with the quality of his composing! His compositional style tends to be of a single melodic line with a subordinate accompaniment: nothing too challenging, then! The melodies are generally graceful and elegant and usually contain sections where the soloist can display virtuosic technique. There is little contrapuntal interest or thematic development in any of his works, meaning he falls squarely into the bracket of 'easy listening' and 'barely memorable'.